Water Treatment

(asked on 13th June 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with water companies on (a) the modernisation of water treatment facilities and (b) increasing capacity to limit the amount of untreated sewage entering rivers.


Answered by
Thérèse Coffey Portrait
Thérèse Coffey
This question was answered on 18th June 2019

Over the past 25 years, the water industry has spent over £25 billion on sewage treatment works and sewerage system upgrades driven by environmental directives to improve water quality. This has delivered a 61% reduction in the amount of polluting phosphorus and a 72% reduction in the amount of ammonia discharged from wastewater treatment works since 1995. In addition, 7,000 combined sewer overflows have been improved, reducing the impact of pollution from sewage discharges.

In the current investment period (2015-2020) the water companies are investing over £3 billion to improve their sewage treatment and sewerage infrastructure. During the next investment period (2020-2025), plans have been put forward to deliver over £4.5 billion on environmental improvements. These include:

(a) Modernisation of around 2,300 wastewater treatment works to meet environmental quality standards such as those required by the Water Framework Directive, Bathing Waters Directive and Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive.

(b) Increasing the capacity of around 550 wastewater treatment works and storm tanks to ensure that they are treating the correct amount of sewage flow and to accommodate future growth.

(c) Investing in sewerage infrastructure improvement to monitor and reduce the frequency and volume of storm sewage discharged from combined sewer overflows.

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